Monitoring tools cut home energy usage

[SVOboy]

Not news to any of us, but definately interestingness.

Giving people the tools to closely monitor and adjust their electricity use lowers their monthly bills and could significantly reduce the need to build new power plants, according to a year-long government study.

The results of the research project by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, released on Wednesday, suggest that if households have digital tools to set temperature and price preferences, the peak loads on utility grids could be trimmed by up to 15 percent a year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/te...gy&oref=slogin

[MetroMPG]

Cool.. More info for the pile:

Hydro One, Canada's largest power utility, recently completed a 500-home pilot project in which homeowners in five different Ontario cities were given indoor displays that allow them to track their electricity consumption in real time.

The bottom line is that this study -- the largest ever conducted in Canada -- found an average 7 to 10 per cent reduction in electricity use over the course of a year, when compared to the same months and seaons in the previous year. This finding supports past studies, including one out of Oxford Unversity, that came to similar conclusions.

http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_arch...7/1453481.html

[SVOboy]

I bought my mom on of those for christmas,

[Lazarus]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Cool.. More info for the pile:





http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_arch...7/1453481.html

That's the same kind of devise I bought.

[bennelson]

That meter is cool!

I will have to start saving for one.


I have also heard about a type of a computer device that gives "analog" data to the user. It is usually a ball that connects with a USB cable to the computer. Software is run that makes the ball change color depending on what data is fed to the software and what it is tracking.

For example, it could be setup so that when your stocks are up, the ball glows blue, and when they are down it glows red. When they are in the middle, it would be purple.

instead of people getting stressed about all the details of which stock is going up or down, they just look at the ball, see it's blue, and say "hey my stocks are good."

A similar device would be great for electric power usage.
I bet there is some hacker out there who could figure out how to take that little panel reader and make it do all sorts of things with your computer.

[SVOboy]

Poke around online for them. I got my new for 50 bucks from someone who bought it and never opened the box.